gripe, gripe, gripe

Yesterday my boss told me about a recent AP article. It was a story out of Bethlehem, PA, where he used to live, about an elderly man who sent his local newspaper a letter to the editor in which he stated that when Saddam Hussein was executed, “they hanged the wrong man.” The letter-writer was then visited by Secret Service agents. For a letter to the editor written to a small, local newspaper. That’s where we’re headed, folks. Welcome to your new life. Oh, and last year this same man received a visit from two FBI agents after he wrote a letter to the same newspaper advocating a civil war to unseat Bush. I want to give this fiery old guy a hearty pat on the back.

Me: “So, uh, I guess maybe I should remove that F**k Bush sticker you gave me from the rear window of my car?”

Boss: “Yeah, that’s probably wise. Especially since you’re inside the Beltway.”

Me: “Well, that sucks, but I don’t want to end up in Guantanamo Bay—you know I can’t stand heat and humidity.”

And now for my Gripe o’ the Day (no, not the America-is-scary segment above!). BBC News is reporting that Catholic leaders in England and Wales are saying that because their teachings prevent their church-run adoption agencies from allowing gay couples to adopt children, they would rather close those agencies than abide by rulings that would force them to comply. The Church of England has now backed that decision. The ruling in question is The Equality Act, which is due to come into effect in England, Wales, and Scotland in April, and will outlaw discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities, and services on the basis of sexual orientation.

I’m gonna preface my gripe by saying two things.

First of all, I’m not a huge cheerleader of Catholicism or organized religion in general. I mean, if religion brings you comfort, joy, and peace; if you choose that religion on your own volition—rather than just blindly accepting it because it’s how you were raised; and if you aren’t afraid to question that religion when doubts arise, then I think it’s wonderful for you to be a believer. But I personally do not pull anything meaningful out of organized religion. And its many downsides (wars fought in god’s name, for example) kind of override any advantages religion might offer me.

Second of all, I was raised Catholic. I’m talking the whole she-bang—everything short of parochial school (although I did attend a Jesuit university!). I was even baptized Catholic twice. (You read it correctly: twice. The first time was an emergency baptism in my parents’ living room, when nobody thought I was going to live long enough to see a full-scale christening, and the second time, after everyone was pretty sure I wasn’t going to kick it in the near future, was a traditional church baptism with all the bells and whistles.) I attended CCD for years. I attended mass every Sunday (my sister and I had to be on our deathbed before we were allowed to skip mass) and attended mass on the most obscure holy days you can imagine. I did confession, had my First Communion, attended nighttime Confirmation classes, got Confirmed, prayed for the souls in Purgatory, kept a vial of holy water in my bedroom after being wildly freaked out by Angel Heart and Prince of Darkness, blah blah blah. (Don’t believe that I was a good little Catholic girl? Click here to see a picture of me—along with the rest of my First Communion class—in my full-on creepy bride-of-Christ garb.)

I mention my former Catholicism because I think it gives me a bit more leeway with criticizing the Church. It’s easy to criticize and condemn something you don’t understand (ie, Christians who condemn all Muslims as being terrorists), and because I have 22 years of in-the-trenches experience with Catholicism, I feel like I have a bit more breathing room with saying, “Hey, I gots some problems with your tenets, yo.” Like the fact that women can’t be priests, bishops, or popes. And the fact that those priests, bishops, and popes—who are, for all intents and purposes, asexual beings, because they choose to lead a life of celibacy—feel that it’s okay to tell other people how to lead their sexual lives (eg, don’t use birth control, don’t have abortions, don’t be gay, don’t have sex outside of marriage).

But anyway, back to my Gripe o’ the Day.

Okay, look, under ordinary circumstances, I’m all for people not being forced to do something that goes against their beliefs. A pro-life doctor shouldn’t be forced to give abortions. An atheist student shouldn’t be forced to say “one nation, under God” while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. If these Catholic adoption agencies don’t want to adopt children out to gay households…well, I think it’s an appalling choice, personally, but since it really goes against their spiritual grain, fine, let them refuse. But to want an exemption from a law? A law that’s beneficial no less? (And yes, I think a law constructed to protect people whose rights and protections are tenuous at best, a law that seeks to end discrimination, is beneficial.) Is it right for the Church to be exempted from a law? The National Secular Society pointed out that allowing an exemption for the Church would open the “floodgates for a never-ending series of demands.” Everybody will be vying for one exemption or another.

That’s what bugs me about this whole thing—this idea of being above the law. That and the fact that these people—contrary to what they say—do not have children’s best interests at heart. How can they? They’d rather keep kids in orphanages, institutions, and in the foster care system than let them be adopted by loving gay households. How is that good for the kids? A non-gay adopter might come along at some point, or might not. The kid could be stuck without a home for years before adoption takes place. And if the kid is non-white, older than a baby or toddler, or has any semblance of physical or mental disability, his/her chances are lowered substantially. That ain’t pretty, but it’s the truth. There are good people out there who are willing to adopt older kids and disabled kids, but they are outnumbered by the kids who need homes.

Please, don’t tell me gays and lesbians are incapable of raising kids properly and morally. They do just as good a job as anybody else. Often better. Like Augusten Burroughs said in Magical Thinking: “But as a rule, gay guys do not make bad parents; they make excellent parents. Because unlike straight people, gay people can’t have kids by accident. Only by power of attorney. I would be a questionable parent not because I’m gay, but because I was raised by lunatics.” We’ve all heard the horror stories about straight people who are incapable of raising kids properly and morally. Parents who ignore their kids, beat their kids, molest their kids, starve their kids, keep their kids locked in cages. Straight people are just as capable as gay people of fucking up their kids, abusing them, or, at the very least, simply not instilling any morals in them. If the Church is that concerned about gay households being destructive for kids, then they need to investigate those household thoroughly before allowing them to adopt kids, just like they are hopefully investigating straight households trying to adopt kids, and they also need to keep tabs on the households after the adoptions go through.

There’s the argument that kids shouldn’t be sent to a home without a mother figure (two gays) or father figure (two lesbians). Well, what about all the single-parent households that are already out there? Does this mean that they’re inadequate or downright toxic to children? Look at how many kids are being raised without a father or a mother. Are they all disasters? Absolutely not! And even if you do have a mother and a father raising the child together, it doesn’t mean they’re both parenting equally. One of the parents could be physically absent much of the time and/or emotionally absent all of the time. I should know. I’ve been there. Just because there is technically a mother and a father in a household doesn’t mean the child is getting a positive and/or consistent influence from both sexes.

And then there’s the argument that gay parents will turn their adopted kids gay. Please. It’s shocking to think that this belief still persists in our supposedly enlightened 21st century age. Homosexuality stems from biology, not influence or coercion. Biology. It’s why straight parents sometimes have gay kids. If the Church is concerned about the welfare of kids around gays, then *cough*maybe they shouldn’t have shuffled around all those pedophile priests—sending them to new parishes with a fresh crop of victims instead of sending them to jail or forcing them to retire*cough*. I’m just sayin’.

I just think the important issue here isn’t so much sticking by personal beliefs, but making sure as many children as possible are adopted into loving, stable homes—be they gay, straight, black, white, mixed race, Christian, Pagan, Muslim, whatever.

I will shut up now.


song heard most recently before posting:
Endless Deep—U2

for whom the veg tolls

Happy Birthday, Jill Schade!!!

This is a three-day holiday weekend and one of those ultra-rare weekends when I don’t have to work, so I’m spending my time doing household stuff, shopping in Takoma Park and at a dodgy-yet-cool gigantic thrift shop in Adelphi, watching DVDs, and vegging, vegging, vegging. Can’t get much better than that.




song heard most recently before posting:
Worn Me Down—Rachael Yamagata

more questions & answers

Here are some more of those questionnaire thingies that circulate on email; I may have filled these out already on this blog, but I can’t be bothered to check!

An identity alphabet

[A is for age:] 32

[B is for booze of choice:] English cider, although I rarely drink any alcohol at all, and when I do, I drink very little.

[C is for career:] Editing/Publishing

[D is for your dog’s name:] It was Benny. My dear boy died in 1999.

[E is for essential item you use everyday:] A tie between my bed and my TV.

[F is for favorite song at the moment:] A tie between Rootless Tree (Damien Rice), Your Ex-Lover is Dead (Stars), Breathe Me (Sia), In the Sun (Joseph Arthur), and The Moment I Said It (Imogen Heap)

[G is for favorite games:] Super Breakout (on Atari, because I’m a purist), Same Game for Windows, Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture Edition

[H is for Home town:] Lebanon, PA

[I is for instruments you play:] None, unfortunately.

[J is for favorite juice:] A toss-up between apple, orange (no pulp, please!), and blueberry.

[K is for kids:] I have none and I’m not sure if I want any. The jury’s still out on that one.

[L is for last hug:] Krista’s dog Max!

[M is for marriage:] I’m not, but I wouldn’t mind being married someday, if I found the right person.

[N is for name of your crush:] No real crushes, thank god! Those things are the bane of my existence. Celeb husbands include: John Krasinski, Damien Rice, Colin Firth, Josh Groban (don’t like his music—just his adorable face & hair!), Hugh Laurie, Phil Keoghan, Jake Webber. Oh, and that dastardly EJ Wells (James Scott) on Days. Lately I’ve also played host to several embarrassing Brit celeb mini-crushes, too: Richard Hammond, Piers Morgan, and the main dude on Life On Mars. (I said they were embarrassing.) And I kind of have a little crush on Billy Bush, but only because he looks like Ryan O’Neal in Love Story, and that’s one of my favorite movies!

[O is for overnight hospital stays:] A few during infancy and one in 1997.

[P is for phobias:] torn leather seats, worms

[Q is for quote:] “People who stand back and watch the commotion for years will suddenly take the world by storm.” --G. Lorin Swenson (more of my faves can be read at: http://www.jenniferboyer.com/quotations.html)

[R is for biggest regret:] A tie between not going on meds sooner than I did and letting certain people treat me like utter shit.

[S is for status:] As in social status? Zilch. Relationship status? Single.

[T is for time you wake up:] 6:30am on weekdays; usually 10-11:30am on weekends.

[U is for underwear:] No thanks!

[V is for vegetable you love:] corn, tomatoes

[W is for worst habit:] laziness, procrastination

[X is for x-rays you’ve had:] A few relating to craniosynostosis, a torn temporalis muscle, and acephalgic migraines. Plus the x-rays my dentist takes every year.

[Y is for yummy food you make:] I’m an awful cook! I guess I make boxed food best!

[Z is for zodiac sign:] Geminis rock da house y’all! ___________________________________________________

In the last 24 hours have you...

1. Had sex: Ha!

2. Bought something: Way too many things at My Organic Market.

3. Gotten sick: Nope, but half my department is plagued with one thing or another.

4. Sang: Surprisingly, no. Often I’ll sing along to music during my commute, but today I didn’t.

5. Been kissed: No, although Plath usually kisses me a few times a week.

6. Eaten something: Dinner last night: vegetarian sushi. Breakfast this morning: a bowl of cereal and a mug of coffee. Morning snack: blueberry bagel with cream cheese.

7. Felt stupid: Surprisingly, no.

8. Talked to an ex: No.

9. Missed someone: No one in particular... ___________________________________________________

Last person who....

1. Slept in your bed: Freyja.

2. Saw you cry: My cats. I watched Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List and those movies always make me brutz.

3. Made you cry: Oh, I don’t even remember. I try not to let people get to me like that anymore. It was probably my grandfather, when he had a health scare a few months ago and I really worried he wasn’t going to make it.

4. Went to the movies with you: Myself, to see a Czech film (Lunacy).

5. You went to the mall with: Shesus, I don’t know. I avoid malls like the plague. Probably the last time I was in a mall with someone was like two years ago, when Kristen and I took Olivia to Montgomery Mall to enter her in a Beautiful Baby contest. ___________________________________________________

Random.....

1. Do you love someone: Friends, families, and pets, absolutely.

2. What book are you reading now: Fifty Russian Winters, by Margaret Wettlin.

3. Worst feeling in the world: Unrequited love. And the loss of a loved one to death.

4. Future kids’ names: I probably won’t have kids, but I dig the names Freyja, Finn/Finley, Eion, Benjamin, Oliver, Sebastian, Linnea, Magda, and Alistair.

5. Sleep with a stuffed animal: Rowlf stays on my bed!

6. What’s under your bed: Boxes and containers of stuff (storage in my apartment is very limited), my Atari set, my dream journal, and lots of cat hair and dust bunnies. Or shall we say dust yetis, because they are huge.

7. Favorite sports to watch: Nothing.

8. Location: In da DC ’burbs.

9. Piercing/Tattoos: Pierced ears, nothing else. Although I had a pierced nose in college.

11. What are you most scared of right now: Bird flu. Never being able to afford a house. Loved ones dying.

12. Where do you want to get married: In an old estate in Lebanon County.

13. Who do you really hate: My upstairs neighbors, Bush, Bush’s cronies, right-wing nuts, religious fundamentalists, people who think gay marriage destroys the “sanctity” of marriage (yeah, like straight people don’t destroy that sanctity themselves all. the. time.).

14. Do you have a job: I’ve got six jobs—my main job and five freelancing jobs.

15. Do you like being around people: Not really.

16. Have you ever liked someone you had no chance with: Sha!

17. Have you ever cried: Ever? Do people actually say “no” to that one? Of course I’ve cried!

18. Are you lonely right now: No.

19. Song that’s stuck in your head a lot: I keep getting earworms from Damien Rice’s new album. But I love that album, so discomfort is minimal.

20. Played strip poker: No—poker doesn’t interest me. I’d like to take a strip aerobics class, though.

21. Menage a trois: No thanks!

22. One night stand: No thanks!

23. Sex in public: Have I ever? No. Would I ever? Eh...

24. Married: Have I ever? No. Would I ever? Sure.

25. Divorced: Same as my answer for #24. ___________________________________________________

1. Something purple within 5 feet of you: The beak on a little rubber monster thingy I got as a Halloween present (he’s sitting on my monitor).

2. The sexiest item of clothing you own: Uh...my neon pink wig, maybe? Or my knee-high boots?

3. Your nails were last painted: Fingernails—I have no idea. Toenails—last summer. I always paint them in the summer because I wear a lot of sandals.

4. The weirdest thing you’ve ever heated in the microwave: Probably socks or something like that, since I’ve got poor circulation in my toes. (Do I sound 80 yet?)

5. How much Japanese do you know: None except “domo arigato”! (Thanks, Styx!)

6. Do you look good in yellow: It’s probably not my best color, since I’m pale, but I don’t think it’s horrible on me.

7. Do you sing: I sing in the car and sing to my cats, much to their chagrin, I’m sure.

8. Ever danced naked in front of a crowd: No, but if I wanted to inflict PTSD on the world, I’d do it.

9. Do you spit: Usually not.

10. Is your hair long enough to chew on: After cutting off 11 inches in December 2005, it is finally reaching a length where I can nibble on the ends if I really want to (which I don’t).

11. Least favorite color: Hmmm...teal, maybe?

12. Ever had Dippin’ Dots: I don’t think so...

13. Ever played an instrument: No, sadly. Well, I did have a synthesizer in junior high, and I do still remember how to play “When the Saints Come Marching In.” I just wish I had kept the music book that came with it, because it was filled with all sorts of rokkin’ tunes, like songs by Wham!

14. Ever had a H2O massage: What’s that? Does someone just shoot a jet of water at you? The thought of getting any kind of massage—except for a head massage and water massage, maybe—repulses me.

15. Do you believe in Big Foot: Yeah, sure, why not. Stranger things have happened, I guess.

16. Ever been to a palm reader: Yes, twice. But neither one mentioned my simian line!

17. Last Pez dispenser you purchased: I don’t think I’ve ever purchased one, but I’ve gotten them as gifts a few times.

18. Have you had sex in your current car: No. My Sukkamielli has virgin seats.

19. Did you have a good weekend: It was kind of terrible, actually. But it could’ve been worse.

20. What are you thinking about right now: How relieved I am that A) I don’t have to do any freelancing this weekend, and B) it’s a long weekend because of Monday being a holiday.

21. Have you ever had a black eye: After my last surgery there was yellowish bruising around my right eye; that’s the closest I’ve come to having a black eye.

22. How is today going for you: Meh.

23. Any plans for tonight: Hit the Vitamin Shoppe and Target, slump on the couch, read, watch TV.

24. Do you find Smurfette sexy? No, I was hot for Papa Smurf (I loved his rock star red pants) and Brainy Smurf (I dig guys in glasses!!)

25. Current disappointment: Where to begin? ___________________________________________________

More questions!

1. Do you have an air freshener in your car: Yeah, a diffuser with peppermint oil in it, even though I’m anosmic.

2. Do you have plants in your room: I’ve got heather in my living room that I think is dead.

3. If you could drink anything right this second what would it be: Hot chocolate, because I’m chilly.

4. Last piece of mail opened: A credit card bill.

5. Does anything hurt on your body right now: Astoundingly, no.

6. Last alcoholic drink you had: A glass of Vana Tallinn on New Year’s Eve.

7. If someone you hated died, would you laugh and spit on their grave: I might laugh, but I wouldn’t spit on their grave. Unless they did something really heinous, like rape me or someone I love, or murder someone I love (pets included).

8. What were you doing at 9 pm last night: Sitting on my bed, skimming a vitamin book, and watching Grey’s Anatomy.

9. Favorite drink at Starbucks: I never go there. I have a $10 Starbucks giftcard I received at work like two years ago and it’s still sitting in my wallet. Although, that being said, Susan and I did pop into a Starbucks on Halloween to warm up, and we had a bite to eat while there.

10. Do you exercise as much as you should: Hell to the no!

11. Did you do the deed on prom night: Doing it on prom night is so clichéd!

12. Would you give your bf/gf a second chance if they cheated on you? No!
___________________________________________________

Eye color: blue

Hair color: brown, but turning white (*flinches*)

Height: somewhere between 5’8” and 5’9”

Right handed or left handed: right

Your heritage: PA Dutch, German, Irish, Swiss, French (I think)

The shoes you wore today: My Nikes, because it’s Casual Friday.

Your weakness: Salty things (mind out of the gutter, please!), Andes mints, Cadbury chocolate eggs, marshmallow Peeps, Amy’s soy cheese pizza pockets, Cedarlane vegetarian ham and cheese pockets, Hershey’s peanut butter kisses, Yorkie bars. Non-food items: sleep, trashy British magazines, boys in geeky glasses, Perez Hilton.

Your perfect pizza: I’m a sucker for plain cheese pizza, but spinach and caramelized onions are great additions.

Goal you would like to achieve this year: Buy a house, visit friends out of state.

Your most overused phrase on an instant messenger: I don’t use IM, but LOL annoys the crap out of me.

Thoughts first waking up: “Arrrrrgggghh.”

Your best physical feature: My eyes. Not the effed-up shape, but the color.

Your bedtime: I aim for 11pm, but often have trouble falling asleep.

Your most missed memory: Hanging out at the playground in Schaefferstown; my time at Goldsmiths.

Pepsi or Coke: Coke, although I rarely drink soda anymore.

McDonalds or Burger King: Neither one is particularly vegetarian-friendly, so I’ll say that they both suck. But lord, I do love their chocolate shakes. And Burger King’s onion rings. And the old-school apple pies still sold at McDonald’s in Europe. Also, the McDonald’s in Tallinn sells baked Camembert chunks with raspberry dipping sauce, and that alone keeps me from wanting to wipe McDonald’s off the face of the earth.

Single or group dates: Group dates in the beginning, when things are still awkward; single dates after that.

Cappuccino or coffee: Regular coffee, I guess, because all coffee/cappuccino/espresso tastes the same to me (due to the anosmia), so I may as well stick with the cheap, easy-to-prepare stuff.

Do you smoke: No. It’s nasty and I’m allergic.

Do you swear: Waaaaaaaay more than I fucking should. Although I need to start watching my mouth around Olivia.

Do you shower daily: On weekdays, yes; on weekends—not a chance.

Do you believe in yourself: More than I realize.

Do you get motion sickness: Nope.

Do you think you are attractive: Nope.

Are you a health freak: Not at all. However, as I grow older, I’m becoming more concerned with what my shitty diet is doing to me, so I’m going to increase my vitamin intake.

Do you get along with your parents: Yes, quite well.

Do you like thunderstorms: Thunderstorms have screwed me over so many times (damaged house, damaged car, flooding, lost power), but I still love ’em.

In the past month have you drank alcohol: Only a glass on New Year’s Eve.

In the past month have you smoked: No.

In the past month have you been on drugs: No. Except for Effexor.

In the past month have you gone on a date: No.

In the past month have you gone to a mall: Yes, but only to buy Christmas gifts at Sephora and Crate & Barrel.

In the past month have you eaten a box of Oreos: A whole box??? No. Not even a single Oreo. But I did ship a few packages of them to Richard in England for his birthday and Christmas.

In the past month have you eaten sushi: Yes, last night.

In the past month have you been on stage: No.

In the past month have you been dumped: No.

In the past month have you gone skinny dipping: In the middle of winter? Uh, no. But I did it before during the summer and I’d gladly do it again. During the summer.

Ever been drunk: No.

Ever been called a tease: Not to my face.

Ever been beaten up: No, but two people threatened to do it to me in high school!

How do you want to die: Peacefully, obliviously. Not from bird flu, because I don’t want to be shoveled into a mass grave!

What do you want to be when you grow up: A homeowner.

What country would you most like to visit: Countries where I’ve never been: Greenland, Norway, Faroe Islands, all of Eastern Europe, Morocco, Antarctica. Countries I’d most like to return to: Iceland, Scotland, Switzerland, Finland, and Estonia.

Number of drugs I have taken: 0, unless you count antidepressants, in which case: 4.

Number of CDs I own: A lot, but Dave owns more!

Number of tattoos: 0

Number of things in my past I regret: Let’s say 5-6.


song heard most recently before posting:
Sundrenched World—Joshua Radin

things I want

If you like Amazon.com wishlists (and I most certainly do), you will love TheThingsIWant.com. It brings out my materialistic side and serves as a dumping ground for all the things I’d love to splurge on when I buy my house.

Meanwhile, this is genius, and I must partake! If there’s one thing I understand, it’s overwrought, cringe-inducing adolescent journal entries. My journaling career began on January 1, 1983, when I was eight and a half years old. I’d received a Pac Man Book of Secrets for Christmas 1982 from my grandparents, and I took to journal-writing like the proverbial fish to water. I followed Anne Frank’s lead and christened my diary with a name about halfway through the year. I named it after...wait for it! wait for it!...KITT the car on Knight Rider. Yes, that’s right, I named my Pac Man diary after Knight Rider. You just try to get more ’80s than that. Go on, I dare you.

I think the best part of that diary is the fact that I was usually too lazy to write on weekends, so on the weekend pages I’d write something like, “I didn’t have time to write in you today,” and then I’d draw pictures of all the things I was supposedly doing which kept me from writing. Like riding a horse. Dude, I don’t think I ever rode a horse in my life. No, wait, strike that—my family once took me to Gettysburg’s Land of Little Horses, and my tube-socked self plodded around in dusty circles on a beleagured pony. That was the extent of my horseback riding experiences, although KITT, the Pac Man Book of Secrets, would beg to differ. I love that I had enough time to draw pictures and write “I didn’t have time to write in you today,” yet I didn’t have enough time to actually, you know, write.

So I’ve been keeping a journal for 24 years, and that includes several angst-ridden, maudlin volumes from my teen years. Picking just one entry for the Cringe Book is going to be so incredibly difficult.

Even though I don’t write as often as I should, and I abandoned hand-writing my entries in favor of typing and printing them out around 10 years ago, my fundamental motives for writing remain the same: it keeps me sane, it gives me clarity, and it preserves memories. As simple as that. My journals contain the meat of my life; this blog contains the broth.

Don’t you just love when you get completely obsessed with an album or a song and you can’t stop playing it? And you feel like maybe you’ll get the shakes if you don’t start listening to it RIGHT NOW?

It’s not uncommon for me to get ridiculously hooked on a particular song or a string of songs, but the album thing hasn’t been as quite an overwhelmingly consistent experience. In 10th grade I went through an obsessive period when all I wanted to listen to The Cure’s Disintegration and Sinead O’Connor’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got over and over again. I barely touched any of the other tapes in my collection. In 11th grade it was REM’s Out of Time and Morrissey’s Viva Hate. In 12th grade it was U2’s Achtung Baby. The summer after 12th grade it was Don McLean’s American Pie and Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits. Freshman year it was Tori Amos’s Little Earthquakes and Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut. The summer after freshman year it was 10,000 Maniacs’s Our Time in Eden and Peter Gabriel’s Shaking the Tree. During the first part of sophomore year it was Cat Stevens’s Tea for the Tillerman and the Indigo Girls’s Rites of Passage. The second half of the year was consumed by Tori Amos’s Under the Pink. I’m sure I drove my dorm neighbor utterly batty that semester, but she was always listening to—and bellowing along with—Meatloaf and Celine Dion songs, so she deserved whatever punishment she got from me blasting Under the Pink and weeping. And maybe doing some other things I shouldn’t have been doing. That summer I obsessively listened to Counting Crows’s August and Everything After. I’d sit in my room listening to it on a continuous loop, undoubtedly trying the patience of my mom and sister. There were no album fixations my junior year, mostly because I was studying abroad and didn’t have access to my CD player. My portable disc player broke like three seconds after I arrived in England, so I was left with a tinny little Walkman that kind of killed my desire to sit and listen to CDs over and over for hours at a stretch. My senior year was dominated by Tori’s Boys for Pele.

After college the music fixation dropped off substantially. I obsessively listened to Tori’s From the Choirgirl Hotel in 1998 (so I always associate it with a shitty former job of mine!) and 2003 was all about Tori’s Scarlet’s Walk and Peter Gabriel’s Up. Over and over I listened to them, day in and day out. In 2004 I became completely obsessed with Damien Rice’s O, and here’s where we’ve come full circle, because right now I’m obsessed with his new album 9. My iPod is still in the shop, so I’ve been listening to CDs instead of MP3s during my daily commute, and this album has rarely left the player. It’s not quite as sumptuous as O, but gorgeously morose all the same. It’s just what I need right now. It’s giving me terrible earworms, though, which—because I’m not overly prone to earworms—makes me paranoid that I’ve got a tumor growing in the part of my brain where earworms are generated. Or maybe I’m just developing a raging case of OCD?


song heard most recently before posting:
Me, My Yoke and I—Damien Rice

rainy days and Mondays always get me down

Early January. Snow boots. A shovel. Non-clumping kitty litter for traction. One would think this meant that I got stuck in the snow this morning, right? Well, one would be wrong. This freakishly warm winter continues, and it was actually mud in which I got stuck, because I have to park on my lawn (long story; I know, it makes me look like white trash), and the rain has turned it into a mud pit of Woodstock proportions. I couldn’t back up onto the driveway, due to the mud, so I tried to drive forward across the lawn. It was was muddier than it looked, though, so after I got my car halfway across the lawn it ground to a halt. My spinning wheels sprayed mud everywhere. Kitty litter and a shovel didn’t work, and I figured I’d have to take a vacation day and spend it trying to dig my way out of the goddamn mud. But thankfully my next door neighbor spotted me when he was leaving to take his kids to school, and after a few failed attempts to get me out of the mud, he ended up lashing my car to the rear bumper of his SUV and pulling me out.

Not the greatest way to start a rainy winter Monday morning (which capped off a kind of crappy weekend), but at least I was only 15 minutes late to work, and hey, the whole thing could’ve been worse.


song heard most recently before posting:
The Drop—Peter Gabriel

life is a careless—sometimes exquisite—smear on the window

Happy Birthday, Annida Christofi Clark!!!

In DC Land, we’ve had an unnaturally warm winter thus far (nary a snowflake to be seen), but this morning was quite crisp. I went outside in my winter coat and scarf to fill the bird feeder and found…little pink flowers blooming below the feeder, tricked into thinking spring has arrived. It damn near broke my heart.

I’ve learned that my uncle/godfather’s brain cancer has taken an unexpected turn for the worse. A misdiagnosis had him thinking that the cancer was holding steady and he was doing just fine. Not long afterwards, another specialist realized, duh, there’s a thumbprint-sized shadow on his scan, indicating that the cancer has grown and spread to the opposite side of his brain. In the course of a few short weeks he went from “You’re doing great—see you in a year!” to “You’ve only got four months to live.” Chemo won’t do anything. They can’t operate because the tumor is too entrenched in his brain. Radiation will extend his life by 1-2 months, so he’s going to undergo radiation five days a week for the next five weeks. He got this news before Christmas, but waited until yesterday to tell my dad, so he wouldn’t spoil his holiday.

He’s a very good man, a very respected man; he deserves better than this. He’s a widower (cancer claimed my aunt/godmother in 1995), a father of two, a grandfather of three. He’s only 70—still so young. Less than six months ago he helped to nurse his aunt through losing battle with cancer, and now he’s in her shoes.

This is a tragedy on many levels, but what astounds me, aside from the gross negligence of his misdiagnosis, is the fact that, in this day and age, we still don’t have a cure for cancer. I’m not claiming I could do a more efficient job of finding a cure (science is not my strong suit)—I just have to wonder where this research is leading. I mean, yes, strides are clearly being made. For example, there is now an HPV vaccine, which, in a sense, doubles as a cervical cancer vaccine. And people are leading longer, better lives with HIV and cancer, both of which used to be automatic death sentences. But we still don’t have a cure. Every year brings about smaller and more powerful technology, both for good (medicine) and for evil (warfare, terrorism). Okay, great, you can now watch videos on your iPod, surf YouTube and look at Google Earth satellite shots of your neighborhood on your Razr/Blackberry/Treo/whatever, use your 10.5 megapixel camera to take startling crisp photos, and study every pore on every face on your big-screen HDTV-equipped plasma television. Cool, neat, but here’s the thing: although there’s medicine for male impotence, there’s no medicine to eradicate ALS, MS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, cancer, AIDS. Where’s the fucking sense in that? Where are our priorities? Do we really need smarter bombs? Smaller cell phones? Cloned animals?

I guess I’m just shocked that we are capable of traveling in space but not capable of curing a disease that has been around forever. That we can map the humane genome and pull DNA from a flake of skin and create artificial intelligence but can’t figure out how to stop our cells from betraying us.

Anyway, this whole situation with my uncle is reminding me about how abrupt life can be. I want to beg my parents and grandfather to fill out one of those All About Me autobiography books. It’s just sad to think that loved ones could die and leave behind so many mysteries. I know all the big events of their lives—Papa’s war stories, for example—but I don’t know the little things. What were the names of their prom dates? What were their favorite subjects in high school? What’s the most rebellious thing they did? I just think it would be a shame for them to leave without me knowing them through and through.


song heard most recently before posting:
Dogs—Damien Rice